"Carbomorons" and Gorethodoxy

Believers in Anthropic Global Warming often inveigh against ignorance and apathy. When the "feel good" types often sin against their own goals by following Gorethodoxy, they don't know and they don't care. If an oxymoron seems to embody contradiction, Carbomorons are those whose own policies increase the very carbon problem they profess to be concerned about.

Consider Earth Hour ( used to be Earth Day but symbolism rather than reality is all that counts). "Lights went out at Sydney's Opera House and Harbour Bridge on Saturday for Earth Hour 2009, a global event in which landmarks and homes go dark for an hour to highlight the threat from climate change.
...
In Asia, lights at landmarks in China, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines also dimmed as people celebrated with candle-lit picnics and concerts."

Think about this: use of candles is OK. What about soot (actual carbon) as well as CO2 from candles? Flatulence from the animals whose tallow went into the candles ( as well as the fertilizer, pesticides, and Caterpillar tractors needed to grow the feed for these)? It doesn't require a detailed calculation to realize that candles are not a good way to reduce a "carbon footprint." Romantic, perhaps, but not effective. (Likewise, wood-burning stoves for heat sounds environmentally friendly before thought intrudes. )

Embrace of corn-based ethanol.
Here's an envirofraud of the first order. When you consider all the inputs to corn growing, distillation, truck transport ( because pipelines don't work ), etc. the energy savings in using c-b ethanol is small to nil. Also, the energy content per gallon is less than that of gasoline. The cost, however, in money is great, raising the prices of food but vastly enriching the corn lobby who, in addition to standard farm subsidies, get 50 cents a gallon in specific ethanol subsidy to make the product competitive. 

But wait, is ethanol really stupid? Actually, sugar-cane-based ethanol is more of an energy gain and, if imported from Brazil, would be cheaper yet BUT the US Congress in its wisdom ( about earmarks and constituent favors ) put a 50 cent a gallon tariff on such imports. Whatever the competitive advantage nature and physics gave Brazilian ethanol over cb ethanol, the US Congress gave it a $1 disadvantage. The boom in cb ethanol is over, having been exposed as a fraud on the public's intelligence and the taxpayer's wallet. NEVERTHELESS, Congressional REQUIREMENTS for increased use of cb ethanol proceed.

Dangers of good intentions

Well-meaning contributors donated bicycle-powered pumps to an Indian village to save on electricity and reduce their carbon footprint. A simple calculation revealed that human power is an inefficient use of even food and the energy used to grow it. While bicycles in Western countries have the ancillary advantage of being healthy and reducing obesity, that's not a problem in Indian villages.

When actual pollution ( NOT CO2 ) became an issue in the 70s, the first regulations on gasoline in 1974 specified the necessary reduction in pollutants emitted per gallon. Unfortunately, the reformulations produced a mileage-per-gallon loss greater than this reduction so that the pollution per MILE TRAVELED actually went up. Environmentalists rarely get things right the first few times ( and sometimes never. )

Often rhetoric is the only goal. Twenty years ago, in continuing efforts to demonize nuclear power, the effluent from the Zion plant on Lake Michigan was accused of producing "thermal pollution" of the lake. Anyone living near Lake Michigan can attest to it being one of the coldest bodies of water anyone would want to swim in so the less than 0.25 deg F projected temperature rise was not terrifying. Then it was noticed that fish were thriving at the outlets to the power plant and the issue...just.....faded.......away.